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            In the winter sparrows invade my yard, swarming the feeders like ants.  It is nothing unusual for 15 or so to cover the trough by the window, while half a dozen more sit in the azaleas waiting for an opening.  Meanwhile, thirty to forty hop along the ground, flitting back and forth to the smaller hanging feeders, which sway from the impetus of their continual take-offs.  After several frosts the brown and black grass successfully camouflages their drab brown and gray feathers.  I can only tell they are there because frosted off grass doesn’t ordinarily move, but that grass literally writhes.

            Brown and gray—drab colors compared to the brilliant red cardinals, the bright yellow goldfinches, the contrasting red and yellow bars on the blackbird’s wing.  Even the brown of the Carolina wren is comparatively bright, and the stark contrasts of the zebra-striped black and white warbler perched pecking at the suet cage draws your eye far sooner than the mousy little sparrow.

            But someday you should sit at my window when one of them lands on the trough not six inches from your nose.  Up close the intricate patterns on their wings suddenly turn those drab colors into a source of wonder and delight.  Like delicate lace, the brown and gray sections, outlined by white and spotted with black, will keep your attention for a half hour or more as you struggle to discern the pattern God has placed in their tiny feathers.  No artist could have created anything so exquisite, especially using those colors.

            And what about you?  God can take your drab colors and create a creature far beyond your imagination.  He can take a miserable life and give it purpose, a sorrowful spirit and make it joyous, a selfish heart and tenderize it with compassion.  He can take a soul overwhelmed by the darkness of sin and make it bright with the reflection of its Savior.

            There is nothing drab about the life of a Christian.  God can make even the most ordinary person extraordinary.  We have no need for garish colors, for manmade ornament, or the laurels of worldly praise.  We know who we are—new creatures, “created in Christ Jesus for good works,” each of us beautiful in His glory.  If all you see are drab colors, you just haven’t gotten close enough.

…Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and…be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Eph 4:22-24.

Dene Ward

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            I don’t know how many times in my life I have heard unbelievers make fun of the scriptures, but they obviously do not realize what they show themselves to be when they do.  Most of them would call themselves intellectuals, but the statements that come out of their mouths prove they are simply ignorant—at least of the thing they have chosen to ridicule. 

            Have you ever heard them talk about “the God of the Old Testament” and “the God of the New Testament?”  They do this to “prove” that our beliefs are based upon our society, subject to change just as society does, which means that it is all an invention of man.  Everyone knows, they affirm, that the God of the Old Testament was a cruel, angry God who punished indiscriminately for even the most minor infraction, while the God of the New Testament is a mild, friendly, grandfatherly sort who forgives anything whether we repent of it or not.  Study the two paragraphs below for a few minutes this morning.

            And Jehovah passed before him and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth.  / Jehovah is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression. / Know therefore that Jehovah your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness to those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. / The earth is full of the lovingkindness of Jehovah, / Your lovingkindness, O Jehovah, is in the heavens, your faithfulness reaches to the skies. / Great are your tender mercies, O Jehovah. / Jehovah is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.

            And these shall go away into eternal punishment. / where their worm dies not and the fire is not quenched. / with angels in flaming fire rendering vengeance on those who know not God and obey not the gospel. / It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. / Our God is a consuming fire. / But the fearful and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

            If you know your scriptures, you probably recognize that the first paragraph is taken entirely from the Old Testament and the second from the New.  In fact, I found that the Old Testament uses descriptions of God like “merciful, gracious, and lovingkindness” 312 times, while the New Testament only uses them 200 times!  Considering that a good portion of the Old Testament is history rather than teaching about God, that seems significant.  So much for the intellectuals and all their theories about God. 

            Do you want to see a God full of compassion and mercy?  Read the book of Hosea (an Old Testament prophet) and hear the ache in God’s voice as He describes His people, first as a wife He loved who betrayed Him (2:19) and then as a son He cared for and taught, who turned against His father (11:1-4).

            Remember Jonah, that Old Testament prophet who tried to run from his mission to preach to the wicked city of Nineveh?  What did he say about why he ran?  I hasted to flee to Tarshish because I knew you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness, and would repent of the threatened judgment, Jonah 4:2.  Jonah knew God would forgive, and he didn’t want those people saved!

            God has not “changed with the times” because He was not invented.  Look at the Greek gods through their mythology and see what types of gods men create.  The true God could never have come from the mind of any man, no matter how intellectual he thinks he is.  A God who gave His creatures the freewill to reject Him?  A God who gave up His Son for creatures who did not deserve it?  A God who lowered Himself to become human, and allowed those same creatures to torture Him? 

            Don’t let the ignorant fools of the world steal your faith.  They have no answers at all for what they believe.  Our God loves us—look at what He did for us.  But our God will only save those who trust Him, obey Him, and live faithfully.  His prophets have been speaking this message for thousands of years--the same message, an unchanging message, a message so far above the intellect of man that no man anywhere could have made it up.

Where is the wise?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the disputer of this world?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?  For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the thing preached to save those who believe.  Seeing that Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men, 1 Cor 1:20-25.

Dene Ward

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            A few weeks ago I got out the dust rags and the polish and went to work.  It had been over two months since I had dusted anything at all and it was showing, not just on the furniture, but in my nose and lungs—I have a dust mite allergy. 

            I knew it would take awhile and it did, dusting every flat surface and every item on them, including a large dinner bell collection, vases from Bethlehem and Nicaragua, and those shaped like bootees that flowers had come in when the boys were born, figurines inherited from grandmothers and great-aunts, a wooden airplane Keith’s grandfather whittled inside an empty whiskey bottle, candles, telephones, a small piano collection, a metronome, fan blades, jewelry boxes, and beaucoup picture frames.  I dirtied up four rags in an hour and a half, sneezed a couple dozen times, and required a decongestant in order to breathe the rest of the day.

            When I finished I looked around.  The pictures all reflected brightly in the wood they sat on, the porcelain shone, the candles looked a shade brighter, and the brass gleamed.  What a difference it made to dust things off.

            So what do you need to dust off in your life?   Sometimes we become satisfied with our place in the kingdom, happy with where we are in our spiritual growth, comfortable in our relationships with others and our ability to overcome.  Sometimes we sit so long in our comfortable spot, be it a literal pew or a figurative one, that we soon sport our own layer of dust.  Maybe we aren’t doing anything wrong exactly, we have just stopped stretching ourselves to be better and do more. 

            “Dusting off” seems a good metaphor for “renewal.”  Paul tells the Colossians we have “put off our old selves” (past tense) but that the new self is “being renewed” (present tense), Col 3:9,10.  Being renewed has not stopped and never should.  Every day is a new beginning for the child of God.  When we forget that, the dust starts to settle, and our light is dimmed with a layer of uselessness that builds every minute.  Soon, as the light weakens, no one will notice us, or is that the point?

            When did you last dust yourself off and get to work, “transforming yourself by the renewing of your mind?” Rom 12:2.  The longer it’s been the more rags you will dirty, but it will only get worse if you don’t start now.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me, Psalms 51:10.

Dene Ward

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            I happened to think the other day, what if someone followed me around with a tape recorder all day, on any given day, and then made me listen to it in the evening?  It popped into my mind after I had said something I should not have said to someone, and they wisely stood there and said nothing back.  You know what happens when someone does that?  All of a sudden you actually hear yourself.  And boy, are you embarrassed.

            So just imagine for a moment that you answer a knock on the door late one evening, just after you brush your teeth and put on your pajamas, and there on the welcome mat lies a tape of everything you have said all day long.  Exactly how welcome would it be?  What would you find yourself listening to?  Griping?  Gossip?  Slander?  Nagging?  Petty arguments?  Insults?  Snide comments?  Bitter resentment?  Boasting?  Cruel comments?  Foul language? Deceit?  Insincere flattery?  Excuses for all the above?  Just who are we trying to fool?  …for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, Luke 6:45.

            How loud would it be?  How cold would it sound?  What would come after each thing I said?   Someone laughing, or someone crying?    

            I have a feeling that no one is really aware of exactly how he sounds.  We do not realize that the things we say are as often and as whiny as they are, that most of our complaints are petty and selfish, that the majority of our comments about others are negative instead of positive, that the impression we give others about our marriages, our families, our church brothers and sisters would make those around us want to avoid those relationships altogether. 

            Maybe this idea is not so horrible after all.  Maybe we all need to pretend today that the tape recorder is running, and do our best to make it “good listening.”  Someone is listening after all.  For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Jehovah, you know it altogether, Psalm 139:4.

Dene Ward

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            We just spent a week with the grandkids.  When it comes to food, they are just like mine were at that age.  They prefer their oranges out of a can, their macaroni and cheese out of the blue box, their chicken cut into processed squares, and their potatoes long and fried.  Forget the complex and strong flavors of Parmagiana Reggiano, feta, and blue—they want American cheese, thank you.  And all their sauces must be sweet—about half corn syrup.  True, these two enjoy olives—but they need to be canned and black.  A strong, briny kalamata is summarily thrown across the table.

            Children have immature palates.  For the most part strong flavors are out and bland ones are in.  Sugar, salt and fat make up their favorite seasonings.  And it must be easy to eat.  When you can barely hold a spoon and get the food on it and into your mouth, you prefer things that are solid without being hard and which fit the hand.  We would never give a child a fresh artichoke to eat, with instructions like “Peel off the leaf, dip it into lemon juice and melted butter, put it between your teeth and pull it out of your mouth, scraping the good part off as you pull, then discard the leaf.” 

            One day they will understand the pleasure of different tastes and textures.  Their palates will become educated to appreciate different foods and even different cuisines.  Even the pickiest of childhood eaters usually learn as adults to eat new things, if for no other reason than to be polite or keep harmony in the home.  When a woman spends hours a day cooking, she wants more than a grunt and food being shoved around the plate in an attempt to disguise the fact that very little of it was eaten. 

            But sometimes people become set in their ways.  They decide they don’t like something, even if they have never tried it.  They won’t entertain the possibility that their palates have changed, and so won’t keep trying things as they become older.  When I was a child I hated every kind of cheese, raw onions, and anything that contained a cooked tomato.  Now I eat them all.  Imagine if I had never found that out.  No pizza!

            What about your spiritual nourishment?  Are you still slurping down canned oranges and packaged mac and cheese?  Do you still think instant mashed potatoes are as good as real ones, and Log Cabin as good as real maple syrup?  What if the Bible class teacher taught a book you had never studied before?  Would you learn with relish or complain because you actually had to read it instead of relying on your old canned knowledge?  What if he showed you a different interpretation of a passage than you usually hear?  Would you chew on it a little and really consider it, or just dismiss it out of hand because it wasn’t what you already thought you knew?

            Keith and I have both experienced complaints from people because our classes were “too deep” or “too hard” or “took too much study time.”  Really?  It’s one thing to have an immature palate because you are still a babe.  It’s another to have one because you haven’t grown up in twenty, thirty, forty years of claiming discipleship. 

            The spiritual palate can tell tales on our spiritual maturity in every other area.  Jesus expected his disciples to mature in just a few short years.  “Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me?” he asked Philip (John 14:9).  If we don’t know his word, we don’t know him.  If we don’t know him, we have no clue how to behave as Christians.

            An educated palate for spiritual food is far more important than whether you have learned to like liver yet.  Become an adventurous spiritual eater.  You will find this paradox: though you become hungrier for more, you are always satisfied with your meal.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:12-14.

Dene Ward

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            “That was your kind of game!” Lucas texted a few weeks ago when the Gator basketball team tromped its opponent by nearly 30 points.  Indeed it was, my favorite kind of game.

            The boys have taught me well, not only strategies and terms, but who to root for in football, basketball, and baseball.  The Gators, the Rays, the USF Bulls, the Miami Dolphins, the Buccaneers, sometimes the Jags if they aren’t thoroughly embarrassing themselves, and any SEC team that is not playing Florida at the moment. 

            But if any of those teams are playing, I do not enjoy what most people call “a good game.”  Why would anyone enjoy something that causes heart-burn, heart palpitations, and heart-ache?  I cringe until the score becomes outrageously unbeatable, and then sit back and enjoy the rest.  That’s my kind of game.

            And though it certainly isn’t a game, that’s the way I like my contests with the Devil too.  It ought to be that lopsided a score.  We have a Savior who has already taken care of the hard part.  We are already so far ahead, even before we start, that a comeback by the opponent should be unthinkable.  We have an example how to overcome.  We have help overcoming.  We have a promise that we CAN overcome if we just try.  We have every possible advantage, including coaches and trainers and all-star teammates, and a playbook that is infallible. 

            We have the motivation too.  As we said, this isn’t a game.  There is no next season, and defeat is an unthinkable consequence that should spur us on to adrenalin-boosted, nearly superhuman feats.  And the trophy is far better than anything offered us in this life.  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.  Now they do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one, 1 Cor 9:25.  That crown is called a “crown of life” in several passages—an eternal life with our Creator. 

            Do not make your game a close one.  Don’t sit back and let the Adversary make a comeback.  Don’t fumble the ball, or commit an error, or make a turnover out of carelessness and apathy.  Victory is not handed to you on a platter.  You still have to want to win, and fight like that every minute.  My kind of game may not appeal to you when you watch your favorite teams play, but it should be the only kind you want when your soul is at stake. 

            We are “more than conquerors” with the help of God (Rom 8:37).  His game plan involves a rout, running up the score, and rubbing the enemy’s nose in defeat.  And it can go exactly that way with just a little effort on your part.

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"...But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:53-55, 57

Dene Ward

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            Anyone who knows what last summer was like, knows that my usual routine was seriously disrupted.  In three months’ time, I had 28 doctor appointments, a full-blown surgery, and a dozen more procedures.  Getting a haircut was the last thing on my mind.  In fact, most of the time I could not have cared less how my hair looked.  But then it started falling into my face and getting in my eyes, a serious problem for someone with “two very sick eyeballs,” as one doctor put it.

            So about the middle of July, I cut it myself.

            The problem with giving yourself a haircut is you cannot see the back of your head.  No matter how much you twist your neck around, the back of your head just keeps getting away from you.  And holding another mirror only works if you have three hands—one to hold the second mirror, one to hold your hair, and one to hold the scissors.

            So I found myself doing a lot of guesswork.  Having curly hair hid most of the mistakes, but is it any wonder that by the first of September my locks were looking a bit ragged?  I could hardly wait for someone who could see me from their perspective to even things out a little bit—well, a lot, actually.

            Isn’t it funny that the last thing we want spiritually is for someone to help us even out our lives?  For some reason we do not mind going around with ragged lives, and worse, we want to believe they are not ragged at all.  We want to believe that what we see about ourselves is the way things really are.  Please pat down my unruly curl, please tell me to get the green out of my teeth, please unfold my hem, please stuff that facing back into my neckline—you are not a true friend if you let me go out in public this way—but do not under any circumstances tell me my faults, my spiritual imperfections, my sins.  You are not my friend if you do tell me about those.

            Could we be any more illogical?  Why is how my hair looks more important than how my soul looks?  The eternity caused by a spiritual imperfection is a whole lot longer than the embarrassment of half a day in town shopping with a physical imperfection.  We are falling into the sin of the Galatian brethren of whom Paul said, So then, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? Gal 4:16. 

            James tells us that we should confess our faults one to another, 5:16.  If we were to call an assembly of the church for the express purpose of allowing everyone to confess their faults in turn, I wonder how many would show up.  I wonder how long the service would last.  I wonder how many people would suddenly become good students of the scriptures, researching all the words in that verse so they could find a way out of it.

            Unfortunately, most of us do not have “the gift to see ourselves as others see us,” (apologies to Robert Burns).  We do not have three hands to hold the mirror and the hair, and make the correct cuts.  That is one reason God gave us each other.  Don’t you think it’s about time we started accepting that gift from one another?

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful, Prov 27:6.

Dene Ward

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            One of the most challenging aspects of studio teaching is switching horses midstream.  Every forty-five minutes I not only had to rev up the excitement when greeting a new student, I had to change my perspective.

            I had one voice student who could scarcely carry a tune.   We spent a good deal of the lesson practicing matching pitches.  The next student was singing Italian art song and learning to trill.  One I applauded for simply getting through the song in key, the other I reprimanded for breathing in the middle of a word.  A five year old piano student would walk in with her eight bar tune, followed by a senior in high school working on a concerto.  One I praised for playing the right rhythm while only missing two notes.  The other I castigated for poor phrase shaping and improper execution of an appoggiatura.  It would have been unfair to expect a five year old to understand an appoggiatura when he didn’t even know key signatures yet.  It would have been cruel to try to teach a voice student with a challenged ear to trill.

            So I should not have been surprised at what I found in this study of faith that has consumed the past year of my life, but I was.  I wonder if it will surprise you too.  Every time Jesus said, “O ye of little faith,” he was talking to his disciples.  Sometimes other people heard it too, but if you check every account, he was addressing those who followed him daily—“ye of little faith.”  Yet the only times I could find people praised for their “great faith” they were Gentiles!

            That tells me a lot.  First, faith isn’t just a one-time first principle.  If even those who had enough faith to “leave all and follow” could be told their faith was “little,” then faith is something alive and growing.  Jesus expected it to carry them through their lives and become an asset to them, not a burden that might be “lost.” 

            Perhaps the most important thing we learn is something Jesus said in another context:  To whom much is given, of him much shall be required, Luke 12:48.  Those men had been with Jesus 24/7 for a year or more and he expected them to have matured.  I know a lot of people who like to claim they have “strong faith.”  Be careful when you do that.  God may just test your claim: “and from whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” 

            So examine your faith.  Is it growing?  Can you handle more adversity today than you did a decade ago?  God expects quick growth.  The people in the first century committed their lives to Him, knowing they might be thrown to the lions the next week.  I worry that too many of us commit our lives to Him expecting all of our problems to disappear in a week.  It’s supposed to be an instant fix to all earthly woes, instead of what He promised--an instant fix to our sins. 

            What exactly are you expecting of your relationship with God?  Some of us try to hold God hostage with our expectations.  “I have faith that God will…” and then we sit back confidently waiting for him to do our will, instead of waiting on His will. 

          Which would the Lord say to you:  “O ye of little faith,” or “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel?”

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:11-12.                                            

Dene Ward

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            We too often impose our standards, our culture, our way of life on those people who lived thousands of years ago in a place far removed in both custom and time.  I have often heard that if Bathsheba had only been a modest woman, David would never have fallen, making her the primary offender, an evil seductress who brought down a man of God.  When I did some study, then placed myself in the correct time frame and civilization, I learned a thing or two, and today I am going to be brave enough to share it with you.

            First, there was no running water in those days.  Now that may seem so obvious as to be ridiculous to mention, but it changes the customs.  I discovered in books about social customs in Bible times that it was not at all uncommon for people to bathe outdoors in good weather.  Homes had center courtyards and screens were set up to shield the bathers from the eyes of those in the house and on the street.  The sexes bathed separately, the women at the same time, then the men.  I know that I can still find today people who bathed on the back porch of their homes before they had running water and an indoor bathroom.  They took appropriate precautions for modesty too, and were never censured for their actions.  Likewise, Bathsheba’s actions were socially acceptable and appropriate.  There were probably other homes where the same thing was happening.  David was the only one at fault here.  No one could shield the bathers from someone on a rooftop.  Society expected men to be “on their honor.”  If their actions put them in a place they did not belong, it was up to them to leave, just as it would be today if a man accidentally wandered into a ladies’ room by mistake.

            Here is another thing we always miss.  In those days young women were married off at puberty.  The Law made it extremely difficult for a woman who was at all fertile not to conceive soon and often (Lev 15:19-28).  Uriah and Bathsheba still had no children and we know in hindsight that Bathsheba was able to conceive.  I believe that makes a good case for Bathsheba being very young, probably still a teenager.  So the king calls for you—not just any king, but the country’s hero, a warrior king, and a man over 40 by the way.  Even if she were 18 or 19, even if she were 25, the intimidation factor had to be huge.  Unless you are a woman over 50 who was sexually harassed by a boss back in the days when turning a man in was not common, when it was, in fact, not quite acceptable, don’t even talk to me about how Bathsheba should have had the courage to say no.  You cannot possibly understand how she must have felt.  Yes, I have been there.

            When you really study the situation and think about it in its proper time frame and cultural setting, the higher probability is that Bathsheba was not a temptress.  More likely, she was a scared young woman who probably felt she had no choice.  As it turns out, David was capable of murder, and she was the one looking into his eyes, not us.

            Or perhaps there was some ego involved.  David was the king and he was handsome. Maybe that excited her, but even if that is true, that intimidation factor just will not go away—David was the final authority in the land.  And this was a man who was so cold-blooded about it that he checked to make sure she was “clean” by the Law’s standards before he even touched her. 

            My problems with Bathsheba have more to do with her naiveté.  This was a woman who, though she lived in a political milieu, was totally ignorant of how things worked.  Her affair with David was just the first time we see this trait, and though we might understand it then if she were indeed a very young teenager, it never seemed to get any better, no matter how long she lived in the palace.

            Read the first few chapters of 1 Kings.  David is dying and Adonijah is conniving to take the throne, even though it has been promised to her son Solomon.  It takes Nathan the prophet to wake her up to what is going on right under her nose.  Then a few verses later, after David is dead and Solomon is king, Adonijah asks her for Abishag.  Abishag was probably the last of David’s concubines.  Everyone in the kingdom knew that claiming a king’s wife was a claim to the throne.  That is what Absalom did in the sight of all after he ran David out of the country.  But Bathsheba takes the request to Solomon as if it were a simple matter of a request from brother to brother.  Solomon understands immediately that his kingdom, God’s kingdom, is in danger and has Adonijah killed.  Bathsheba should have known too.

            So we are back once again to Jesus’ command that we are to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.  This is not just a matter of learning to study better and being careful not to place our own values on a time and place far removed from us, making judgments that may not be valid.  There is something to be learned from Bathsheba’s behavior, though perhaps not the behavior we always condemn.  God is not pleased when we act like simpletons, when we fail to see the obvious.  He will not save us when we fall into traps that should have been avoided. 

            Bathsheba did become a faithful wife to David.  She did see to his wishes when he became old and physically unable to, even if it did take a nudge from Nathan.  Maybe after Adonijah was executed she finally gained a little wisdom in the affairs of her world.  It certainly took her long enough.

Brothers, be not children in your thinking.  Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature, 1 Cor 14:20.

Dene Ward

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            Our bird watching has spilled over into our camping trips.  Somewhere along the way it dawned on us that we could see different birds in different areas of the country.  So we began carrying small bags of birdseed and scattering it around the campsites.  I saw my first savannah sparrow at Blackwater River, my first nuthatch at Cloudland Canyon, and on our latest trip, my first dark-eyed junco at Black Rock Mountain.

            That’s not all we saw.  We had laid the seed along the landscaping timbers that both defined the site and kept our little aerie from washing down the mountainside.  As long as we sat fairly still and talked quietly, the little gray birds with the white vests hopped closer and closer down the long chunk of weathered wood, pecking at the free and easy meal.  Suddenly a loud crunch behind us caused the birds to fly.  We turned and there sat a fat gray squirrel enjoying the free meal himself, and much more of it.

            “Shoo!” we yelled simultaneously.  He reached down and pawed another kernel.

            Keith hopped up and spun around his chair, clapping his hands with every “Git!” and every step.  Finally the squirrel hopped away, not nearly as scared as I wished.

            Since he was up anyway, Keith started the cook fire and I walked around the tent toward the back of the truck where we stowed our food supplies.  There on the other side of the tent sat the squirrel, once again noshing on the birdseed.

            “Scat!” I shouted, running right at him.  Again he turned and leisurely hopped away.

            After that we were up and around a bit and he kept his distance.  But soon Keith had stepped back into the woods to pick up some deadfall for a later fire in the evening while he waited for the flame to die down to coals, and I was in the screen tent setting the table and prepping the chops for grilling.  I looked up just in time to see that little marauder headed straight for the open screen door, gently waving in the breeze.  He had bypassed the birdseed and was aiming to score people food.

            Only my clumsiness and advancing years kept me from vaulting the table.  Instead, I ran around it, knocking both knees on the corner of the bench and nearly laming myself in the process, stomping, yelling, clapping, and every other noise I could manage.  For once he showed a little alarm and scooted through the brush surrounding us.

           Keith returned and we both bustled around the tents, the truck, and the fire, cooking and laying out the meal.  Half an hour later we sat down to inch thick, herb-rubbed, wood-grilled pork chops, Spanish rice, and skillet corn and red peppers.  Meanwhile, the squirrel sat down to more birdseed.  He crept up behind Keith, he crept up behind me.  He hopped along the timber behind the fire, then tried the one behind the tent.  Every time Keith jumped up and scared him off.

            After the sixth or seventh time that I touched Keith’s hand and pointed, he hung his head in defeat.  “Let him eat,” he said, ferociously stabbing a fork into his chop and sawing with far more exertion than necessary, “so I can.”

            That’s exactly the way Satan comes after us.  Do you need a Biblical example to believe this?  How about Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39)?  She appealed to Joseph’s natural appetites first, by far the strongest appeal to a young man.  She made it look rewarding—she was the Master’s wife after all, imagine the extra privileges he might have received.  She spoke to Joseph “day by day,” a constant and growing pressure on him.  Even though he seems to have made it his business to avoid her, finally she managed to catch him alone—now it was even easier to give in.  And boy, did she make him pay when he didn’t.

            Satan is persistent.  He comes from every angle and tries every trick.   Sometimes he comes as often as every few minutes.  He will never give up.  Even just fighting him will cost you—time, comfort, convenience, security, wealth, friends, freedom, maybe even your life.  But if you give up, the cost is even worse.  If you say, “Let him eat,” he will—he will “devour” your eternal soul, every last bite.

Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, prowls about, seeking whom he may devour…Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand…To that end keep alert with all perseverance…1 Peter 5:8; Ephesians 6:11-13, 18.

Dene Ward